The Legacy of Leonid Brezhnev

...The average annual grain crop is supposed to be about 240 million metric tons through 1985...

...Hidden inflation, mounting shortages of all kinds and an erratic food supply have hardly improved the quality of Soviet life...

...They talk about a shock pace of labor for the whole Five Year Plan" says one State Department analyst of the Soviet economy...

...intelligence analyst familiar with the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century: "Change is occurring fast in the USSR and, as the Russians see it, the change is for the worse...

...There have been second thoughts in the West, forinstance, onthepropos-ed multi-billion dollar natural gas pipeline from Siberian fields to Western Europe, whereas five years ago helping the Soviets build their economic infrastructure was a widely accepted notion...

...In his first testimony as Secretary of Defense, for example, Caspar W. Weinberger told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he thought American Armed Forces were inferior in some areas to the Soviet Union's...

...The Pacific fleet has been expanded, as have missile batteries and Air Force installations in the area...

...A mile of railroad costs the equivalent of about $3 million, and a mile of paved road almost as much, given the terrain...

...Of the 155 countries in the world today," the study says, "the Soviets have significant influence in 19...

...Moscow has been most successful, according to the Center, in gaining influence among the world's poorest nations...

...This goal ignores a number of unpredictable variables...

...Abroad, the USSR is currently engaged in threatening situations on three fronts: China, Afghanistan and Poland...

...The planners, for their part, have set new work goals for the next five years...

...By the end of this century, according to John Collins in his huge study "U.S.-Soviet Military Balance: 1960-1980," one-third of all 18-year-olds entering the Soviet Army will be non-Russian speaking youths from Central Asia and the Caucasus...

...If one object of any nation's foreign policy is to secure its frontiers, the Soviet report card shows poor performance...

...The enormous cost of extracting oil f rom the inhospitable Siberian marshes and taiga points up the Five Year Plan's hidden problems...

...This is one reason why the Russian consumer still suffers shortages that might have otherwise disappeared long ago...

...Similarly, the Western aid pipeline, once filled with dollars, francs, marks and high technology, no longer flows so mightily...

...To paraphrase candidate Ronald Reagan, the Soviet delegates in the Palace of Congresses could well ask if they are better off now than they were five years ago, just before the last Communist Party Congress...

...In fact, after a military modernization and expansion program that has lasted a decade and a half and shows no signs of abating, the Soviet state is no more secure today than five, 10 or 15 years ago...

...Of the total industrial growth stipulated, 90 per cent is supposed to come from stepped-up labor norms...

...In addition, the shortages have prompted adoption of the Bulgarian scheme of agro-industrial complexes to provide a more efficient seed-to-mouth delivery system...

...American intelligence analysts, studying satellite surveillance photographs and other information, also see evidence of new shipyards and arms factories, and believe Russian weapons engineers are developing four new ICBMs...

...Meanwhile, Moscow must confront the same questions that are being debated in foreign capitals when weighing the needs of security against escalating costs...

...Food, in particular, is the focus of the new plan, for the dismal performance of Soviet agriculture (after drawing one-forth of all state investment in the Brezhnev years) has created widespread scarcities of meat, fish, canned goods, sugar, butter, fresh vegetables and fruits...

...The phenomenon cannot be ignored by Russian leaders making economic, political and military decisions...

...But they have always sought that cooperation eagerly...

...Under the new plan, industrial production is to expand by a little better than 5 per cent annually over the next five years...

...Constraints on their economic growth continue to mount...

...This "big stick" policy has won respect for the USSR, not least from the leaders of its arch rival, the United States...

...If the Soviets launched a nuclear attack on China," the Joint Chiefs point out, "they would do so knowing that they would suffer significant damage in retaliation...

...Even detente's greatest promise of making Western expertise available for the modernization of the Soviet economy, Soviet conservatives could argue, failed to fully materialize and exacted too high a price...

...In any case, at present the stock public theme of Russian leaders is that their power compels their involvement in any major world event...

...Headded: "Whatever you do, you won't be able to change that...

...The liberal Center for Defense Information, in a study of trends of Soviet influence in 1945-80, concluded that the Soviets peaked in the late '50s and have slightly declined since then...

...The 26th Congress, like every Congress since Stalin's death, will end with solemn commitments to vastly improve the consumer's lot...

...Some factories are stocking goods for their workers to cut down on hours wasted in queues...

...They' re hit by poor agriculture...

...Since nothing succeeds likesuccess, no U.S...

...But it has suffered major setbacks in China, Indonesia, Egypt and other countries where it made huge investments...

...In short, "victory gardens" have become state policy...

...Workers willbeabletoborrowupto3,000rubles to build sheds and buy necessary implements...

...To the West, the USSR sees the unhappy prospect of an American military buildup that it must strain to match...

...Amid all this maneuvering, Peking's nuclear capability is gradually acquiring meaning...

...In his candid essay, Perevedentsev emphasizes that Central Asia will inevitably be the future labor reservoir for Soviet industry, which is desperately searching for more workers...

...Although that was sufficient to keep the Soviet Union the world's leading oil producer, the figure fell meaningfully short of the daily target range of 12.45-12.95 million barrels . The new plan retains the old target, but the CIA is skeptical that it can be achieved...

...Industrial growth in 1980 was only 3.8 per cent...

...Nor has the uncertainty surrounding the imminent transfer of power??still a sensitive subject among the Soviets, who, unlike the Chinese and the Yugoslavs, refuse to even discuss the matter...

...The situation keeps getting more complex...

...William T. Lee, a former CIA analyst, puts the figure at 18 percent...

...This enabled Polish leaders to cultivate their country's historically more harmonious associations with Western Europe, and made Polish citizens feel fairly secure about venting their long standing grievances...

...Certainly the present turmoil in Poland, where social democracy is rearing its head (and testing the limits of Soviet tolerance), can be traced to the improvements in East-West relations...

...Either way, the Soviet leadership faces a delicate situation...

...In this atmosphere, what American Soviet economic affairs expert Gregory Grossman calls the "second economy" is expanding as a sort of popular protest vote...

...One study shows that the chemical industry made the greatest technical progress from 1957-71, and also was the most reliant on Western technology...

...Never flamboyant since its inception in 1964, the regime of Leonid I. Brezhnev is characterized by most American Sovietologists as cautious, orthodox and threateningly expansionist...

...Mark Hopkins is a specialist in Soviet and Eastern European affairs...

...One is agricultural performance...

...specialist expects the Soviets to reduce their military outlays...

...It signals how desperate they are...

...It contains evidence, too, that the pro-detente elements in Soviet society are on the defensive...

...Critical energy expectations are considered too high as well...

...Perhaps most depressing of all for the average Soviet citizen, the ratification by the 26th Party Congress of what is almost surely Leonid Brezhnev's last Five Year Plan will not change things much either...

...The new Five Year Plan hints that Soviet authorities are less confident today of Western investment...

...Veteran Soviet affairs specialist Vernon Aspaturian perceptively observes that they were enshrined in Brezhnev's 1977 Constitution...

...But some students of Soviet affairs feel the Soviet Union is seriously compromised by domestic problems that have been piling up as the aging Brezhnev group has deferred crucial decisions, and that gains of the Soviets in the world at large are overstated...

...The Pentagon expects more Soviet troops to be deployed in Mongolia in the 1980s, adding to the three Soviet divisions now there (plus five in Afghanistan...

...Soviet planners are counting on a lot of oil, both to fuel the economy and to sell at high prices for hard currency on the world market...

...But they have been tolerated because they are the source of approximately one-fourth of farm output??and an even greater proportion of pigs, chickens, eggs, vegetables, and fruits...

...Bank loans will be made to collective farms for the purchase of tools and other equipment...

...Beyond these objectives, however, are earthy realities frequently overshadowed by the frightening statistics on Soviet nuclear and conventional forces...

...The Soviet Union has earned the condemnation of much of the rest of the world for reneging on human rights provisions that it never intended to enact, let alone fulfill...

...But that is where the Soviet riches lie, and to capitalize on them will mean major investments in the short term for returns far in the future...

...That presents some challenges, he acknowledges: The state planners will have to lure young villagers to the established manufacturing centers in the western cities, or plants will have to be built in Central Asia, bringing about a transfer of economic power...

...Instead, it has turned into a weapon in the hands of not only Polish but Soviet dissidents...

...Soviet military and related commitments, like the expensive space program, are not spelled out in public documents . The new plan merely ends with a general statement on the subject: "The maintenance at the necessary level of the defense might of the Soviet State will enhance its international prestige still further, and will promote the strengthening of the world Socialist system and the cohesion of all forces that are fighting for peace and social progress...

...Now there is parity," said Georgy Ar-batov, director of the Institute of United States and Canadian Studies, in an interview a few months ago with the New York Times...

...The director of the West Siberian Oil Institute, I. Nest-erov, has been quoted in a Russian newspaper as saying that about 50 billion rubles, roughly $74 billion at the artificial exchange rate, have been invested in Siberia's Tyumen region since operations were started there in 1965...

...To entice Western financial and technological aid, Brezhnev set in motion an emigration policy that has permitted tens of thousands of Jews, Russians, Germans, Armenians and others to leave the country...

...Current estimates are that the military uses one-sixth of Russian chemicals production, one-fifth of metallurgy, one-third of machinery and metalwork-ing and that anywhere from 40-80 per cent of research and development is devoted to it...

...Concurrently, a "strict economy drive, and thrift, is to be insured" throughout the country to help alleviate scarcities of major resources...

...Now, the Party and government bureaucracies have decided to encourage citizens to take up the personal plots...

...The CI A estimates that defense expenditures take about 13 per cent of the Soviet GNP...

...Then there is the Helsinki agreement, initially a Brezhnev enterprise to formalize the post-World War II borders in Eastern Europe...

...This assertion of equality in the superpower club finds its strongest confirmation among Americans who see the danger of a Soviet demarche with global implications...

...Some Western experts contend that the enormous Kama River truck factory could not possibly have been put into production without foreign technology and equipment...

...Agency analysts concluded earlier that Soviet output would peak at 11.85 million barrels per day in 1980, then begin a decline that would eventually make the USSR an oil importer, with ominous implications for its Middle East policies...

...The Russians regularly insist that autarky is a wholly possible alternative to East-West cooperation...

...Nevertheless, exactly how much of its resources the Soviet Union will decide to divert to the military in the 1980s will probably depend on how relations develop with the Chinese, and on its reading of the pivotal East-West struggle...

...China continues to stir fear in the Kremlin, which has already shifted 42 divisions, upwards of 500,000 troops, to the Chinese border regions...

...Their aims are to insure international conditions favorable for the strengthening of domestic Communism, to safeguard national interests, to consolidate world "socialism," and to support national liberation...

...But the Russians spend their time looking for food, standing in lines...

...By the Soviet Union's own statistics, the answer would have to be "No" on the domestic economic front...

...The other side of this coin is the apparent collapse of detente, with its profound implications for future planning...

...The Soviet press is filled with stories about equipment failures, inefficient drilling procedures and managerial foulups in the West Siberian oil fields that account for half of Russia's oil and are regarded as the promise of the future...

...As birth rates among the Slavic-speaking urban dwellers in Western Soviet districts dropped, they rose in the Caucasus and among the Moslems of Central Asia...

...While they clearly guessed wrong for 1980, there are grounds for continued skepticism...

...SaysoneU.S...

...Rus-sification, discrimination, Islamic sentiment, and nationalist emotions all run through what are only superficially economic matters...

...And the 50-page draft guidelines for the Plan show that Soviet development in the 1980s will be strained by forces the Kremlin can neither predict nor entirely control...

...The consumer does not seem any better off than he was 10 years ago...

...During the week beginning February 23, the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union will bring together the USSR's political, military and bureaucratic elite for a celebration of accomplishment and dedication to future victory every bit as meaningful as the rhetoric of American political conventions...

...Not only do Soviet consumers nurture greater expectations than can be satisfied, but heavy industry, agriculture, the military, and dozens of other influential sectors vie savagely for larger shares of scarce investment funds, raw materials and labor resources...

...The labor force is down...

...It is laced with illegal activities ranging from currency speculation to private production to huge swindles of state property that, in extreme cases, have resulted in death sentences for those caught and convicted...

...At the same time, though, the assembled delegates will be attaching their seal of approval to the 11th Five-Year Plan, a revealing document likely to lock in the patterns of Soviet policy for the rest of the decade in every sphere, from building Communism to shoe production quotas, from supporting wars of national liberation to reconstructing the Kolomna diesel locomotive plant...

...Whether the Brezhnev regime has made a conscious decision to achieve military superiority over the United States, or whether its huge military-industrial complex has simply gathered irresistible momentum, the result for Soviet leaders is the same: They must find ways to pay the bill...

...And most experts agree with Harold Brown, who ended his four years as President Carter's Defense Secretary convinced that Moscow will accept any sacrifice to maintain military equality with theUnit-ed States...

...But as the orthodox younger Soviet leaders look to the 1980s, and reflect on the experience of the past decade, they may well conclude that detente has caused more harm than good...

...The net effect is an unofficial rationing system that deprives others elsewhere of provisions...

...Oil output totaled 12.1 million barrels per day in 1980...

...Perhaps most significantly, the leadership last month issued an order enlarging the role of the ubiquitous private plots in agricultural production...

...Not only is the economy lagging, but the demands of powerful interest groups increasingly exceed the country's wealth...

...The projections suggest shifts in the makeup of the Soviet Union that appear to be troubling Moscow as well...

...Comparing actual Soviet performance to inflated reports, analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency predict that this pace, not the 5 per cent of the plan, will obtain over the next several years, in part because they estimate that farm production will barely advance 1 per cent a year, rather than the projected 2.5 per cent...

...Graft, payoffs and bribery seem to be the lubrication needed to make the Soviet machine function...

...AFTER THE 26TH PARTY CONGRESS The Legacy of Leonid Brczhxicv bymarkh??p|<ins Just as everyone is pretty much persuaded the Soviets are awesomely armed and 10 feet tall, along comes that quinquennial event in the Kremlin's Palace of Congresses to remind us that they also are weighted down with formidable social and economic burdens...

...While there are honest differences of opinion in the murky area of Soviet defense spending, everyone agrees that their military and related sectors consume not only huge sums of rubles, but a large percentage of the country's skilled labor, raw materials, research and development, and finished products...

...Writing in the weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta, Soviet demographer V. Perevedentsev recently noted that while the population of a region west of Kiev, in the Ukraine, went down by 30 per cent in the 1970s, the population of rural Tadzhikstan went up by 36 per cent during the same time period...

...Yet the Soviets have j ust finished a plan where three out of five harvests yielded less than 200 million metric tons, compelling costly purchases of grain (more than 30 million metric tons last year alone) that dragged down the entire economy...

...The basic foreign policy lines are already deeply drawn...

...Because the actuarial tables suggest that by 1990 today's senior Soviet leaders, whoaverage70yearsofage, will begone from the scene, in a sense this Party Congress is Brezhnev's legacy, his final effort to mold the USSR??regardless of the victors in the succession battles...

...Thus the Soviet power that invaded Afghanistan and menaces Poland is vital to the Constitution's foreign policy objectives...

...In the process, emigration has become established as a norm, albeit not without many obstacles...

...Unfortunately, because of the overall decline in births during the 1960s??a direct result of low pay and lack of housing??there will be ever fewer young workers entering the labor market in the 1980s and thereafter...

...Brezhnev, of course, is inextricably linked to the detente policy, hence the ritualistic argument in his speeches that it survives, despite onslaughts from undefined reactionaries...

...This would seem to support the growing body of academic literature suggesting that, in fact, they cannot accomplish many essential industrial or developmental projects unassisted...

...It's true that there are more clothes, and some household goods...

...The one-half to one acre patches of land assigned to peasants and city workers (not actually owned by them) have always been ideologically alien...